Seven MIT Affiliates Named to 2026 Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Cohort
Five MIT faculty members and two alumni have joined the 2026 AI2050 Fellows group, a Schmidt Sciences initiative addressing key challenges in artificial intelligence.
A group of five faculty members and two alumni from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been selected for the 2026 cohort of AI2050 Fellows. The program is administered annually by Schmidt Sciences, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt to drive forward scientific progress.
Co-chaired and conceived by Eric Schmidt and James Manyika, AI2050 focuses on tackling complex difficulties within artificial intelligence. The program centers around a core inquiry exploring what positive outcomes might look like by the year 2050, asking fellows to identify the specific problems solved and opportunities realized to achieve a beneficial societal impact.
Research Focus Areas Across Disciplines
The newly recognized fellows span various departments and address multiple facets of artificial intelligence development, ranging from mathematical foundations to social implications and biological applications.
Sendhil Mullainathan, holding the Peter de Florez Professorship at MIT with appointments in Economics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, was named an AI2050 Senior Fellow. His project concentrates on turning patterns identified by artificial intelligence into testable theories. Mullainathan also leads The Bike Shop@MIT, a research center centered on human-centered artificial intelligence.
Several MIT faculty members received Early Career Fellow designations:
- Alex Damian, an assistant professor in Mathematics and EECS, focuses his AI2050 project on efficient model training, studying the mathematical foundations of deep learning.
- Bailey Flanigan, a career development assistant professor in EECS and Political Science, directs her project toward collecting structured public feedback that legislators can utilize during complex decision-making processes.
- Yunha Hwang, a career development assistant professor in EECS and Biology, focuses her project on defining biological enzyme functions and is a co-founder and chief scientist at Tatta Bio.
- Manish Raghavan, a career development professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and EECS, targets his research on reducing adverse outcomes while enhancing positive elements of widespread artificial intelligence adoption.
In addition to the current faculty members, MIT alumni Irene Chen (PhD '22) and Allison Z. Koenecke ('14), alongside former postdoc Juan Carlos Perdomo, were also appointed as AI2050 Early Career Fellows.
What it means for developers
While academic fellowships focus on long-term theoretical and societal challenges, the practical tools used in AI research and application are constantly evolving. Developers building applications can try top AI models cheaply through one API at https://apixoai.online, streamlining integration across multiple leading architectures without managing separate provider accounts.
Source: MIT affiliates named 2026 Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Fellows — MIT News AI. Written by the Apixo team from that report.
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